‘How I Met Your Mother’ Finale Mixes Ambition, Melancholy (SPOILERS)

After nine seasons, “How I Met Your Mother” finally ended the most protracted father-children conversation in history — as some have already noted, a little too late to escape with its creative dignity entirely intact. Nevertheless, the one-hour finale reinforced the sense that this was a show willing to take chances, and one that at its best deftly mixed melancholy and sentimentality with — finally — how to reach happily ever after.

Written by series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas and directed by Pamela Fryman, the closing chapter regarding Ted (Josh Radnor) and his idealistic search for love — as pal Marshall (Jason Segel) put it, always going “way too big too soon” — capped off what Ted described, with a gift for understatement, as a “really long weekend.” But he finally found the elusive mother (Cristin Milioti) to those bored-looking kids, which, in an unexpected twist (and SPOILER ALERT if you have yet to watch), wasn’t the end of the story.

So in an ambitious if not fully successful hour, the producers followed the central quintet (and Ted’s plus one) as they navigated their way through the 2010s — complicated by “life and jobs and kids” — and a bit too hastily, the ’20s.

Somewhat appropriately, the series came back to its key characters, zeroing in on the relationship between Ted and Robin (Cobie Smulders) that often felt so right in season one. Still, it took a whole lot of fancy footwork to get from where the episode began to how it wound up, rather hastily hopping over a huge chunk of story to reach the point where the older Ted can be granted, with the blessing of his kids, a second shot at happiness.

For many, the emotion of the hour will overcome such nitpicking, and there was certainly a lot of heart in it — the best moment in that regard coming from Neil Patrick Harris, when the skirt-chasing Barney finally comes face to face with the woman who will actually change him, his baby daughter. That said, this is one of those episodes where it probably helps to be either hugely invested in the series or to have drifted far enough away that some of the leaps won’t feel quite so jarring.

As stated at the outset, what felt like an inordinately well-cast comedy with a clever gimmick when the show made its debut had probably outlived its expiration date, but the ratings justified keeping the show around while CBS sought to conjure a worthy successor — TV’s version of the circle of life. As a bonus, the network had the multi-talented Harris as a ready-made host for events from the Tonys to the Emmys.

All told, the finale, like the series itself, was fine, if not, alas, legendary. But hey, unlike some of the shows that have come and gone while Ted searched for his dream girl, it certainly beat a slap to the face.

Hello people who actually read comments. Huge fan of this particular show until season 9, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. Now ask yourself as you’re reading this, what show did we all watch for 9 seasons? We all watched “How I Met Your Mother” and for 9 season we all laughed and followed the story even though at times it was poorly told. We get to season 9, and for the most part, season 9 was alright. Most of the episodes seemed irrelevant to me and were just used as fill-ins to get to the finale we all were waiting for. Now don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of irrelevant episodes in this series, but in the last season? come on. So we get to the episode we are all waiting for, the season 9 finale, the series finale. And what happens? (Spoilers if you have not seen the finale, but it wouldn’t make sense since you would be reading my comment on a page talking about the series finale review) They go through years and years worth of stuff that could’ve been used for individual episodes in season 9. They tell us that Barney and Robin get divorced, which personally didn’t upset me, I liked Nora much better. Marshall and Lily have another child or two, I don’t remember at this moment, and I’m fine with that. Then we get to the big one. Ted’s wife (the mother of his children that the show is based upon finding) ends up dying for whatever reason. In the end, Ted ends up stealing the blue french horn for Robin again (geez Ted) and thats how the series ends. With all that said, it leads me to my conclusion of: I just wasted 9 seasons of my life watching this show. And to you people who don’t agree with me, I already know the counter arguments. “The locket”, “Destiny”, “Their first and second season relationship”, “The universe” etc…
If I wanted to watch a show where two people are supposed to end up together, I’ll just rewatch Friends again, because the seemed to do it right. The way HIMYM finale ended was just completely awful. The regular ending even ruined the alternate ending for me. I want to know who the mother of Barney’s child is (Nora! Maybe? No? okay…) They just leave you with so many unanswered questions. Therefore season 9 doesn’t exist to me and the series ends with us seeing the mother for the first time. Hooray. Much thanks for your time!

The final episode was what the entire world was secretly wanting. It just shows the unexpected is to be expected and somethings/some people always have a way of finding their way back to each other. Looking back now, we should have almost guess Ted and Robin would end up together (minus Tracy dying) but it all adds up. The locket, the blue french horn.. Ted finally found his Lebenschlangershickalsschatz. Feel proud to be apart of this unbelievable journey.

I was not wanting that… I somehow knew it was ment to happen but since they try so hard to make you believe he was happy… I mean… come on. They wrote the ending the first season, they even filmed the kids then. It would have worked if they didn’t stretch the series so much. It’s always been a friends wannabe, but filling the blank spaces with gay references and objectivizing stuff over and over.
Oh and that obvious “I’m gonna make you cry” thing that they’ve been trying lately. That made the last episode to be a bit better than the whole last season.
Sorry the harsh comment.

independent sluts are punished with sterility and bad marriages; parenthood redeems womanizers; the mother of your children has to be a quasi-virgin whose tragic past has kept her from doing whomever doable like you did yourself in your quest for her; after she has fulfilled her reproductive function, you may want to have the mother of your children killed off so that you can go back to the barren love of your life ‒ provided she has atoned for her sluttiness through years of hester-prynne-like loneliness.

I realy hated the late episode. It’s like Tracy never was a part of the whole show and his children never needed theis mother. I realy liked the episodes around Robin and Barney, they can’t JUST be divorcest. They just fit. I don’t like the atualy end, just erast it from my mind, so all the time watching HIMYM wasn’t wasted.

Hello, the series is titled How I MET Your Mother not How I DETAILED OUR ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP. Clearly, you misunderstood the shows premise. The show ends with Ted telling his children how he eventually met their mother, and then 6 years after her death, going to Robin. The show was clearly not about his relationship to the mother but instead about the circumstances that lead to their meeting. Get an attention span, idiot!

I first went to this show because it had “Willow” from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Nick” from “Freaks and Geeks”. It’s amazing how the cast has gotten so big. Especially Neil Patrick Harris. He was just another forgotten child star.

Seems like everyone would be satisfied, if it was a perfect happy ending: Barney and Robin stay together, Ted and Tracy live happily ever after (without having a tiniest argument throughout the years, of course) and the whole gang still meeting on Friday evenings at McLaren’s. But here’s the bad news: it’s not how life goes. At some point your “everlasting” friendships fade away, life bites you in the ass and takes away the things you love the most and you realise that “the universe” does not lead you by the hand but you still have to keep going.

Well I had plenty of this “that’s not how life is”. If any of us wanted “real life” would get one, or just look your neighbors by the window. If tv was real nowadays, it would show just a notebook logged in facebook.
If you want to analyze the show as a moral model… oh man they did so many things just plain wrong!!! It’s not the news, it’s just a story. And I wouldn’t rule my life by a story.

Only if your ignore the fact that characters Robin and Barney were developed as having grown up and started acting more like adults they were supposed to be. Or the fact that Robin was never really that into Ted, at least enough to keep dating him when they were actually together.

Friendships come and go, marriages fail, but the girl that dumped you three times and married your best Bro is not the woman whose is going to make a windowed father’s life whole again 30 years later.

Yeah and the disposable mother who was of no real consequence whose dealt could be explained away in three minutes was an awesome.

Mark me down as one of the those who says the writers of this show are dead to me, as is their next series, and the boxed DVD with alternate ending.

oh, i couldn’t agree more!.. so disappointing, i would love to see Robin and Barney together, and Ted with the pretty big-eyed mother. maybe, the creators attempted at being original, but it so didn’t work for me, nor was i moved by Barney going all soft with the baby.

One of the rules of fiction is don’t change the genre. You can’t solve a western by having aliens land. And in this case a light hearted affectionate show ended as a dark hateful drama, Friends meets Breaking Bad. It would have been a better ending if they had all died in a shootout. It turns out that HIMYM was never about finding the mother, it was about an unhealthy obsession with the women he could have but shouldn’t have. Few people have an opportunity to create something enduring. This is a show that could live on in syndication and Netflix binges. Now, there is no need to watch 200 plus episodes. The mom is dead, neither Ted or the kids care. The producers in one stroke ruined nine years worth of work. The show should have ended with Ted leaving the wedding with everyone sad he would be going to Chicago. He walks out to the train, and without the crude plot device of the nosy women have started talking to the mother. They handled her introduction to the show with such deftness and care. Surely they could have written the love scene for the ages as in one brief conversation the two reveal each other and realize that each is the one the other was always looking for. They kiss, cut to the kids on the couch, the daughter makes some remark about how many times are we going to hear this story. The doorbell rings, cut to Ted as his still very much alive wife joins them along with the other four characters. Either of them can make some remark about every time they have a reunion. That would have turned one of the worst hours of television into one of the best.

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It was a perfect ending to a very long romantic comedy. Bringing Robin and Ted together in a way that never compromised any of the other characters was well done. It was obvious to a long time fan that the feelings between Robin and Ted were forever even if not acted upon and having the “perfect” girl for Barney to love forever- a daughter. – brilliant. A job well done.

what a shame it didn’t finish as we had been led to believe for so long. *shakes head* seinfeld finale you are finally forgiven. don’t send out negativity – sending out positivity and good to the world. watch some things that inspire instead of this.

it wasn’t legendary. it was awful. spread some cheer and not this waste of 9 year wait. we don’t watch shows like this for upsetting scenes like this we watch them to escape. not going to rant anymore. i’ve wasted enough time on this like for 9 years.

The creators tried too hard to be Shakespeare. But, they are not him. They wanted all the twists and turns in last 15 minutes. I bet they wrote the ending at season 5 which was totally make sense. Shakespeare’s dramas are about two hours, we member all the emotion ups and downs, and the shortfalls of every character, so the twisted endings were reasonable and inevitable. This TV show lasted 9 years, you just can’t put this nonsense. I have no problem with the ending, but from creative point of view, they forgot they made the characters grew up and matured. The way how they ended the story was totally disconnected from last 3 seasons. Robin and Barney were not the same people as before. But to their credit, Ted was the same person, “she not the one, I have to break up with her.” Better yet, she died. It was creepy that he told his kids that, “by the way, your dead mother was not the one, Aunt Robin is. I just have to wait socially appropriated time to tell you that, since she is died.” in that sense. “all the crap I told you about true love and soul mate, was about Aunt Robin and me.” They built so much about the great love Ted and the mother had was legendary…but like barney’s job… PLEASE!

From fans’ point, What the hell, we don’t want another fairytale: Ted got everything he always wanted: kids and the girl. It was not sixteen candles. Robin could be independent, successful, single, childless and happy. Really, women don’t need men to be happy. For last 4 seasons, she grew so much, why the creators had to put her to reverse: a needy, attention wanting, fame craving bitter bitch, worse than the beginning? Number 31, you’ve got to kidding me. Marriage and love are based on convenience? Barney’s playbook II? Ready? There are many ways to break up a marriage…that was what they could come up with?

We all share some baggage with the characters, indifferent parents, children of divorce, some of us a kind of emotionally attached to the show, so we hoped for a happy ending. The characters were kind of growing up with us. But we are all realistic about life, so sad ending is fine, but treating last 3 seasons was a FLASH, never happened, that just an insult.

The show seemed to come to a full circle, but the creators forgot them had made a few loops. Just like Shakespeare’s drama fell to the personal inevitable shortfalls.

This rushed ending made it seem like Ted and Tracey’s marriage ah no value and was just something between two people who both “settled”.

If the last season was focused more on the future lives of each character rather than Barney and Robin’s pointless marriage then to would’ve made more sense. We could’ve seen how Ted and Tracey were each other’s soulmates and how they developed together. We could see how she gave him everything Ted wanted (lily and robin had both commented how happy he was with Tracey) and also how her death was devastating for him. We could’ve seen her telling Ted about her impending death and her wishes for him to move forward. Once he’d told his kids about their dead mother, his kids realising how sweet their love was. We might also have seen Robin’s involvement in their life after the mother died and how she may have rekindled the love her and Ted shared. The kids realising this and convincing Ted should move on and pursue his rekindled love for Robin.

To rush everything in an hour and undo everything so easily without truly explaining the whys an the hows made it a very dissatisfactory ending.

Here’s how I would’ve liked the story to end: Barney and Robin had their share of marital problems, but instead of divorce, they decide to separate. Barney, heartbroken over the separation, decides to adopt a baby girl. Robin sees Barney looking at his daughter for the first time and is overcome with emotion – they find their way back to each other once again.

Ted is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, and the beautiful journey that led him to her. We see the mother get sick and eventually dies. Ted’s eyes begin to tear up as he recalls his last moments with her before she closed her eyes forever. The kids comfort him by telling him it’s been 6 years and that he has to move on. He finally realizes it’s time to let her go and finds hope again. The same hope that propelled him through those 30+ years before he finally met her. The hope that just like his wife, he will be given a second chance at love. He sees a world filled with different color umbrellas.

$20, the mother of Barney’s child isn’t named because she’s gonna be the main character of “How I Met Your Father.” Without question, the HIMYM cast will have some cameos. Maybe I’m just being hopeful, but I don’t think the show’s creators will end things like this, it’s just gotta tie in somehow. But that’s just me.

Quite frankly the ending sucked, it was like watching an entirely different show after 9 years. The way it should have ended is:

BARNEY AND ROBIN
Barney and Robin traveling the globe and instead of a stupid “blog” as a business Barney would have been giving seminars on “How to Make Your Playbook” in all the different countries Robin was assigned too. Then the miracle of miracles, Robin is having “LADY” problems and end up at Marshall and Lily’s baby doctor, and hey guess what the Doctor was wrong….and Robin is pregnant. Barney of course hates the idea and rails against it every chance he gets, Barney and Robin have troubled times over the pregnancy until the baby is born, when Barney sees the baby for the first time, he says his “you’re the most important thing in my life”, he finally grows up becomes a stay at home dad, Robin lands a nightly talk show gig at CNN in NY (apparently they will give one to anyone).

MARSHALL AND LILY
On their journey back from Italy, they stop in Scotland, to relive their honeymoon and child number 3 is on the way. Lily becomes an expert on Italian Rena-sonce art and is recommended as curator of Italian art at the MET by the Captain. Marshall is contacted by Jeff Coatworthy who after prison is born again but still loves money, they form a corporation to represent GREEN companies to the US Government and make millions. Their story ends the same as season 8 with an offer of a Judgeship.

TED AND TRACY
Everything for Ted follows the same story line with Tracy except in the future Ted and Marshall have a falling out over Marshall’s intensity about his work and not having time for fun. They don’t talk for years, Tracy works behind the scenes to try and get them back together because Ted is miserable and it is affecting their marriage. Mean while Barney is getting cabin fever and get the idea to plan a surprise anniversary party for Robin. Lily confronts Ted at the party, Marshall hears the confrontation from a distance, there’s a “Bro” moment, Later ,Ted finds out from Barney that it was Tracy who put everything in motion.

It ends with Ted explaining to the kids, that’s why their mother is the love of his life, his savior and his best friend.

Tracy enters – “My god this has been going on for ever – all I asked you to do is break the news that were having another baby…and don’t forget, I get to name this one!

I like your ending way better. Look finding the mother was be supposed to important. That fact she was just a baby making place holder for Robin is kind of sick. If the show was about meeting Robin, It should have ended after the first episode. No kid would be just fine to learn the person their dad really love all this time was their Aunt Robin, instead of their lovely, funny, smart, tragically dead mother. Frankly I found Robin and Ted together kind of a wrong, while Robin and Barney worked for me. Robin is an unusual woman and that is the only kind I could see Barney really caring about. Meanwhile, Ted is basically a romantic dork. Hard to believe that over time Robin would not get really bored with his sappiness.

The problem with your ending is that it is too perfect. Life is not perfect, it is messy, and this entire series has showcased the messiness of life. It has been a comedic sitcom, but what has made it funny has been the real elements that the writers incorporated. People complain that movies, especially Disney ones, show happily ever after endings, and why do they complain about them? Because they do not exist. No one lives happily ever after because bad things happen, but you need those people that can make life happy and not suck even when those bad things happen. I’m not sure what exactly you did not like about the ending, but if it is mainly because the mom died and Ted and Robin ended up together, well that is exactly what the mother did. The mother’s fiancee, whom she had been with for years died on her birthday if I am remembering correctly. Then years later she got with someone else, but she still had not moved on completely then she found Ted her 2nd true love and married him because they were in love. Unfortunately she died and there relationship ended too soon, but after 6 years Ted was ready to move on, and he moved on back to Robin who was actually his first true love. If you think it was wrong for Ted to be with someone who made him happy after a great loss, then you have to say it was wrong for the Mother to be with Ted after her great loss. There were aspects of the finale in general I think they could have done better. I did feel it was a little rushed, but at the same time I think the writers did that purposefully to highlight the moments in time where the whole gang was together, because after the wedding they all drifted and did their own thing. In my opinion, the writers, from the beginning, wanted to stay away from the contrived happy ending that people expected and that is what they did. They created an ending 9 years ago that showed the twist and turns of life and they stuck to it.

Since when do people complain about Disney movies? From what I’ve seen, they are some of the highest-grossing films at the box office precisely BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE HAPPY ENDINGS! TV is entertainment, after all. It’s supposed to be a diversion from the mundane where nothing works out as we planned. We all watched the show because it was a great comedy with a feel-good subplot.

Now, a more realistic ending certainly isn’t the end of the world, but it didn’t fit with the entire tone of the 9 seasons of the show. And a 1-hour episode certainly isn’t enough time to cover 16 years of life-changing events for the entire cast. This was a show that took 9 years to tell a simple story, and suddenly the last episode tells 16 years of history in 40 minutes? It makes no sense!

I agree 100% that the ending written here makes WAY more sense than what the writers actually put out there on Monday.

People have been very negative about the ending to our beloved HIMYM but to tell you the truth, it could not have and should not have gone any other way. Early in the season when Ted declared he was still in love with Robin and was going to move to Chicago made my eyes roll and almost convinced me that it was time to let the show die, almost. This finale made it seem necessary, the writers had a plan for everything. It was sad when Barney and Robin got divorced and seemed a bit rushed but everybody turned out happy. Lilly and Marshall had each other, Barney had his daughter and Robin had Ted and let’s be honest, we all wanted to see Robin and Ted end up together. They deserved each other. If this was a shorter series, maybe three or four years, this finale might have pissed me off but I knew all of the characters so intimately that I wanted to see them all happy and I was thrilled to see it happen. This might not have been the happy ever after ending we were all anticipating and some of you critics were praying for but I’ve got news for you, life aint all sunshine and rainbows. Bad things happen to good people every day, eight year olds get leukemia, good women get raped and good people get murdered every day. That is what made HIMYM so special for so many of us, it new that life was unfair and it would not shy away from it. Any ending that could not embrace that had no place in this landmark TV show. Best of all, it ended the same way that it began. Ted outside of Robin’s apartment, lovestruck and gripping a blue french horn. You have got to appreciate the symmetry.
The entire finale did seemed a little rushed, I’ll be the first to admit that and they could have stretched it out over two or three weeks, that is my one and only complaint. Carter and Bays had a vision, a unique vision, a beautiful vision and I would not have wanted it any other way. It was the perfect ending to the perfect show. It was nothing short of Legendary.

I was definitely not rooting for Ted and Robin to get together. That ending would have made sense after season 3 or 4, but not after season 9. All of season 9 was supposed to be about Ted finally letting go of Robin once and for all. The intrigue was that he didn’t know the true love of his life was waiting for him at the wedding reception, but we did. Clearly he had resolved his feelings for her by the end of the season. He gave the locket to Barney, and he didn’t even think of running away with Robin when she asked. To me, that was the final nail in the coffin of the Robin/Ted relationship, and I was looking forward to seeing Ted’s character finally find happiness with the mother. Going back to Robin just didn’t make any sense.

I’m SORRY?? “let’s be honest, we all wanted to see Robin and Ted end up together”?!?!?! What the FUCK?! I don’t know what you mean by “we ALL”… I think you mean “ONLY YOU”, because EVERYBODY wanted Robin and Barney ended up together, THEY were the perfect couple, THEY were the reason I still watched this stupid sitcom, THAT WAS THE SHOW ALL ABOUT. About how Robin wasn’t right for Ted, she was right for Barney!! I think the writers are two lame guys just like Ted, and one of them was in love with some girl like Robin and that’s why they wrote this shity finale.

“We all” may definitely not be implied but to be honest, I always knew Robin and Ted were going to end up together. That was what I stood by from the season finale of season 8 and right now, I don’t care who Ted ends up with. I just want him to be happy. My main concern was that it was very rushed. I would like more in depth explanation throughout the episode and not just – POOF! For me, it was the right ending (Life sure as hell isn’t perfect.) but wrong execution. They shouldn’t have made this an episode. They could’ve at least added another episode just to see character growth or something. I would LOVE to see more emotions with the children regarding their Mom or how they spent dinner with Robin and other things like that.

Also what most people don’t understand is that it’s called “How I met your Mother” not “How I ended up with your mother,” Life gives you shit and that is reality. Reality is what the show depicted from the start which is why I don’t really mind the plot. I just wish they executed it better.

Let’s be perfectly clear on something… No matter how much the HIMYM creators/writers wanted this show to be this generation’s Friends, it wasn’t. Ted/Robin was no Ross/Rachel. Barney, as legendary as he could be, was just a poor man’s knockoff of the true player king of NYC, Joey Tribbiani. And Lily/Marshall, as great as they were, was no Chandler/Monica.

well I wanted ted and robin to end up together, so is there a problema with that? who said that ross and rachel was a perfect story, I hated they ended up together, I mean Ross cheated on Rachel( we were on a break stupidity) for me it was a great ending, If you don’t like it, that’s ok but it’s ok for all the people who liked the ending too, I am Reading a lot of posts in different web pages and people attack to people who liked the ending, that is not ok.

The season finale definitely killed a little piece of me, It was such a great show and I loved every part of it, I could probably recite it line for line. I loved the fact that Ted was epic and always searched for an epic love, and I loved how they always just missed each other through out the seasons, Ted and Tracey finding one another was magical, and the fact that she gets killed off (especially so quickly) was such a disappointment, especially when Ted goes to Robin’s apartment and she is living the same life style she did in season one just ruined it for me, Ted deserved an epic romance and a happy ending with the woman he searched for for all those years. I would love if they did a alternate ending or something, it would restore my love for the writers, because as of right now they’ve broken my heart.

“How I Met Your Dad” isn’t the other side of this coin. They raced through that in HIMYM’s “How Your Mother Met Me.” HIMYD is a completely new set of characters who, I believe, Marshall very briefly spoke to in MacLaren’s during the finale.

Honestly. To me, this was a crappy finale to a crappy season. I was hoping at least the last episode would be great, to make up for this season.
I wanted Ted and Tracy to have a happy ending, i wanted Barney and Robin to at least last longer. I know it´s been in the cards that Robin and Ted eventually would end up together, but i’ve never liked them together, i wanted Ted to end up with Victoria (for season one, not the weirdo she turned out to be later on)..
With this season i kinda feel railroaded. It all happened so fast, i feel like they were all over the place, not knowing which way to go. I really grew to love Tracy´s character and i hate that they killed her of so soon. I would have felt differently if they had used this last two seasons to let us get to know them together, seen her get sick and ted dealing with that in his ted-ish ways. And then, if they must, make him end up with Robin. I also felt like Barney had grown the past season and to spend a whole season on their wedding and making them divorce so soon.

Penny and Luke are some cold-hearted kids. After watching the finale (I’m still on the fence about whether or not I liked it) I went back and watched the very first episode. So Ted sits his kids down and says, “Kids, I’m going to tell you the story of how I met your mother.” The kids reply, “Are we being punished for something?” “Is this going to take a while?” Their mother is DEAD, and this is how they respond? I know it’s been six years, but come on! That is COLD…

The producers wasted 30 minutes a week of my life for 9 years because I watched a show that I enjoyed only to have it totally ruined in a one hour episode. What was the point of having a whole season centered on the wedding of Robin and Barney only to have them divorced the episode after the wedding??? Are you kidding me?! Why would they make a comedy about how this man met his kids mom only to have the mom die in the final episode. Oh, how hilarious – NOT!

How could the writers do this to the ending?? Ted deserved a way better ending to his story than to once again be a bachelor going after robin!! I have loved this show since the beginning and seen every episode and was ready to set down and see a bittersweet finale where the whole gang is together and happy and ted is finally with the mother. However instead of being able to have an emotional goodbye to characters I have come to love I was too busy getting whiplash from all the last minute plot twists where Barney and robin divorce after we just spent an entire season dedicated to their wedding and then Barney has a kid with a girl who isn’t even important enough to have a name!and then come to find out this adorable girl who was perfect for ted dies and once again (a much older ) ted tries to get back with robin. I feel cheated out of an ending that should have left me feeling happy for ted and this wonderful group of friends but instead just made me feel sad that ted is once again going after a girl who it never really seemed to work out with.

i love himym and the finale was a big shock. Its not what we wanted but it was amazing.. tHanks for a good nine years. I just wish barney and robin together but I sstilll loved the episode and all of you. :) im gonna miss watching you every monday :(

The finale was a great hour of recapitulating years of friendship, love and respect for each other, emotion and sentiment about “an apartment,” trials and tribulations, life’s ups and downs, “big moments,” a better then average divorce rate, growth and maturity, with a union many hoped for from the start! Kudos to all for putting the finale together! A very great ending to a show that had seen it’s time! Live on with fond memories!

The perfect end for the show to me is robin and barney ending up together, and magically she had a baby, and showing the last scene from the episode as Ted, his daughter and his son in the hospital with their mother dying, with something like “and this kids, is how i loved your mother” or something.

I really think that robin and ted ending up together is not good, i mean, look at everything they went through, it’s not fair for ted to end up with robin. Anyway, i has hopping for a sad end, or a really happy end and not a “consolation prize” end like this.

This finale was all over the place. Entire season leading up to the wedding. Then they divorced. Barney has a love child. That was ok. But he gets with the mom. Doesn’t marry her at first. Then she dies. Then he goes after Robin again?.that’s his best friends ex wife. Wth. This finale was garbage. They didn’t do this show justice. It should very ended with everyone married sitting around a thanksgiving table or something with their kids running arounsd. Maybe they have the same amount of kids and they form their own friend circle like they hsd

I thought the finale, while imperfect because of all that it included in one episode, had the most logical ending. What is so sacred about character development. People don’t basically change over that time, and the show was never about Ted/the mother. It was always about Ted/Robin.

The ending clearly worked in the sense that everyone is talking about the “plot twists”. I never followed the show closely. I saw it from time to time – enough to know who’s who, etc. I checked out the end because it was occasionally funny. This last episode was a real snoozer. By the end I simply didn’t care about any of these lost souls devastated that someone might move to Chicago or whatever. Booooooring!!! “Do you guys know what happened in this bar. Lots!” Wow, that’s deep stuff.

I didn’t like the finale at all, I always thought his true love would be the mother of his children since he went nine seasons talking about how he met her… and after all that, he was in love with Robin the whole time???… Bleh…

This finale was bullshit. Not as bad as the Gossip Girl finale, but bad. They ruined 9 effing seasons in one stupid episode. I’m never watching anything from these two ever again. They suck, this sucked. I feel betrayed and disrespected. I’m so effing mad I can’t even being to explain it.

I can’t believe I stuck with this show for so long, always hopeful they’d turn it around. I don’t know why I thought the finale might still be good, as the show had been going down the drain for years. At least now I know why – the creators were unable to adapt and grow with the show.They went on about how the finale was going to be so utterly “beautiful” and “true to life” – I call bull on all of it. Just because they have someone divorce or die doesn’t make it “true to life”. In this case it basically invalidated everything that was good about the entire series. This was the easiest, cheapest, most disrespectful ending possible.

I agree they totally disregarded everything these characters had been through leading up to the finale. We had already accepted that Ted and robin were no good together and so had they.. This ending makes no sense.

I am indifferent about this finale. I feel like the show did stay true to the message that it was pushing and hinting at in the last season and looking back at a few moments the ending does make sense however I think It felt rushed and ultimately was not what people expected because they feel like characters went through dramatic changes for nothing.

The mother dying was not a surprise as it has been strongly hinted at and theorized for a while now as to why the story was being told. If we go back to the cut scenes in the future a few episodes back when ted is talking to Tracey and starts to cry after talking about Robin’s mom being at the wedding he says “No mother should miss their daughter’s wedding…(Ted starts crying)” This was the first major hint that something was going to happen to the mother. In this same cut scene Tracey tells Ted that she does not want him living in the past. This was the writers trying to set up the ending and convincing the audience that it is OK for Ted and Robin to end up together because after 6 years it is “what the mom would have wanted”. The only problem with this is that the writers built up the mother as to Ted’s perfect match and soul mate for 9 years only to kill her off and brush through her death rather quickly and almost disrespectfully. I would have liked to see more time spent with Ted and the mother rather than the episode speaking a lot about Robin and how she fell away from the group (even though it makes sense with the way the ending happened that he would spend more time talking about her). The writers made Tracey such a lovable character and the chemistry between Ted and Tracey was so good that it made me like her too much and care about her fate. Ted has been through so much in the series it sucks to see the love of his life ripped from him so quickly and have him ultimately end up with Robin who we had NUMEROUS instances of Ted having big revelations of how he is over her. Another problem I have with the final few mins of the show is the kids reaction to the story. How heartless are these kids that it only take 6 years for them to show zero emotion after hearing a story about their dead mother? I understand that they want their father to move on but to show more relief than sorrow that the story is actually done than to the story of how their dad met the love of his life to lose her rather quickly is pretty cold.

The Barney and Robin scenario too is quite a baffling one too. Why have all the character growth and maturity of Barney as to have him and Robin end up exactly as they started. Barney went through all these changes and growth as a character it seems for almost no reason what so ever. He made these grand gestures to win Robin back leading you to believe that she is the love of his life for him just to ultimately admit he is not one to tell someone he is madly in love with her and everything he has or will have is now hers (except his daughter). Season 8 and 9 are spent showing how Barney loves Robin and goes through drastic changes and incredible ploys to win her back and propose. Why do this to break them up in the first half of the finale?

The finale made sense to me however I would have preferred to see Ted get his happy ending with Tracey instead of seeing him get his consolation prize of Robin. The writers can’t make everyone happy and just because I wasn’t satisfied with the ending doesn’t make me hate all the other episodes that I was laughing at.

i agree with you and i have some facts to you that you might not now, all the scenes when ted is talking to his children are all filmed in the first season, making the serie already done, so when the kids said that about ted and robin in the end, it was all made in the first season, the story has always be ment as the way it happend

Yeah I knew that but just because they filmed it didn’t mean they had to show the part with the kids. Just Future Ted talking would’ve been great. I’m sure they felt trapped in a corner with the ending already done but the show went on with more seasons than they anticipated and changed so I’m sure the ending could’ve changed too. I guess im just a little disappointed with the way it ended. But like I said they cant make everyone happy

After last night’s finale, my wife and I went on the message boards, looked around for appraisals, and found almost nothing but negative reviews filled with all sorts of pejoratives and hyperbole. I immediately wanted to publish some sort of antidote to those appraisals, and I suppose here is as good a place as any, so here goes:

I really liked how the series ended. I think the last episode could have benefited from more time, or perhaps some of the storylines contained in the finale should have been extended to earlier episodes as well, but I believe that the ideas represented in the finale are sound. As I told my wife last night (who did not like the ending), “if you have seen all the episodes, and liked the show from the first season (because of the first season, in fact), but you didn’t like the ending, you’ve been watching it wrong.” I stand by that statement, and here is why:

1. It was clear from the beginning that Ted and Robin would end up together. Ted has always loved Robin, even when he tried to convince others (us as well) and himself that he didn’t. The first few seasons should have made that crystal clear, but there were also countless hints to that effect in every other season. The last season, which prominently displayed the locket as a device, was the clearest example of that. So in essence, if you don’t like that Ted and Robin ended up together, you simply could not have liked most of the stuff going on every single season.

2. It also should have been clear that Barney and Robin would not work. Again, there were so many hints at this ever since they began, and those hints were often intertwined with hints to point #1 above. I heard rumors that Bays and Thomas originally planned for Barney to actually be gay and end up finding a man (rumor: it was Blauman!), and starting a family with him. That would have made more sense, and the “perfect month” line seemed ad hoc anyway. However, the resulting conclusion in re: Barney’s character is the same, he needed something different than himself, and since Robin was a female version of himself, it follows that he needed something different than Robin. Also, Robin needed to see that a man that wasn’t devoted and hopelessly romantic (like Ted) was not what she actually wanted.

3. If they hadn’t killed Tracy, it would’ve violated the law of Chekov’s gun, since early on in the season, as Ted and Tracy sat alone at Farhampton telling stories, they clearly alluded to the fact that she was not going to be around for much longer.

4. Tracy’s role was not minor, she gave Ted so many of the things he wanted. He got marriage (eventually), kids, family life, a house, a woman who plays the bass and shares his eccentricities. But in the end, when she had gone (to join the man she loved, who also passed on) Ted realized that so many of those things that he wanted didn’t quite fill the hole that was left by not having Robin. It took Ted getting everything he had on his list of desirable things to realize that after all that, he’d still want to be with Robin. I think it’s fitting as well that in sitting down to tell a story about how he met Tracy, Ted ends up focusing on Robin, while being oblivious (classic Schmosby!).

5. Tracy clearly knew that Ted had a very strong love for Robin. Don’t take my word for it, think of Ted and Tracy’s wedding day, which Tracy spent expending effort to track down Robin (who was all but excommunicated by the group) and make sure she got there.

6. At the end of the day, it was symmetrical. Think about it, Tracy had “the love of her life”, who died to soon, and thought she turned away another opportunity to be with someone, she finally found the next best thing. Ted found the love of his life (Robin), but she was not ready to love him back, so he did what he thought would allow Robin to go find happiness herself, and he found a woman who gave him all the things he never had with Robin (but always wanted to). Eventually, neither of Ted and Robin’s alternate situations last, and they are led back to each other, older, wiser, and both (finally) on the same page.

7. The blue French horn is a pretty good device to sneak in at the end.

If you made it through these 7 points, I hope that you can realize that the emotional arc of the show always bent toward Ted ending up with Robin, and though some of the middle seasons steered away from that arc it was always there, and in the last season, they did what every responsible set of writers/creators should do, and followed the arc. Expanding the law of Chekov’s gun, we see that you don’t want to introduce a blue French horn in the first act if you don’t plan on using it in the third. Even if I’m the only one to say it, I hope they hear me: thank you Bays and Thomas for a decent show with the ending it always should have gotten.

I totally agree with your analysis on the episode. True, the finale wasn’t spectacular, but it felt real. Too many shows have too idealistic/optimistic endings. HIMYM, however, felt bittersweet, with just the right amount of sweet at the end. BTW, can I quote you?

@Patrick True, the finale basically just cut out any character development they had for the past 9 seasons, especially Barney and Robin. But honestly, life is just like that. Sometimes, after so many years, you find yourself remembering your first love even though it didn’t end well the first time (or the 2nd, or the 3rd… oh Shmosby). That kind of experience sticks with you for the rest of your life, and I think that’s what the creators were going for. It’s not the best ending for sure, but it seems just right, IMO.

Yes, maybe Ted always loved Robin the most, but that does not change that Robin – like she stated before – and he are fundamentally different people. Maybe they now want the same things. Maybe they are looking for the same. Maybe Ted always wanted Robin a little more – something I don’t think is true. But in the end, Robin cannot give it to him. She does not love him the way he loved her. They easily just could’ve been great friends for each other, that they loved each other as friends. A great journey of how you don’t always get what you want. A journey where Ted learned that you don’t have to cling on to one woman (Robin), you can also find true love in another. There is no ‘she is perfect for him or he is perfect for her’. Nobody is perfect for anybody. But love is not something artificial that you can create on commando. Like you suggest Robin suddenly did for Ted.

It would have been something if Ted learned that the one does not exist. There are 6 billion people in this world and you can find love with more than one. And love for one person is not the same as love for the other. You cannot express love in quantity. The love for Robin and the love for the Mother are just different, not more or less. Besides: clinging to one person is never good. What if Robin didn’t want to go back together? What if it ended badly between the two because – like Robin said – they are too different? Then it would all have been for nothing. It feels like Ted hasn’t learned anything. He falls back on old experiences, didn’t make any steps forward in his life. In fact, they did some backwards. Just like most of the characters in the last episode.

But like most people that defend the last episode, you too seem to have had the “perfect vision of how it should have ended” by – from the beginning – taking hints out of the episodes that Robin should BE with Ted. That does not make it plausible. It is a journey that you live. You don’t know where you end from the beginning. Character development. You saying that Robin should end with Ted because of the things that you mention, puts you some seasons back in my eyes.

The death is what bothers me most. It’s something I can accept, I just absolutely hate how it was done.

Look, this show stopped being funny or even consistently entertaining years ago. But what made me, at least, keep coming back to this slog was that every now and then it would strike just the right emotional chord.

This show did one thing well, and it was emotion. Ted was its emotional center. And, again, I and plenty of other people saw the mother’s death coming. I have no problem with it.

But that should be your finale! If you wanna toss in a couple of epilogue minutes and, if you must, even bring him together with Robin at the end, fine. Whatever.

But to take the most emotional moment of your most emotional character’s life in a show that’s only ever been good at emotional moments, and to just pass it over and move on to “Welp, that’s how I met her kids. Oh, you think I should call Robin?” is just too ridiculous.

If she was going to die, that should have been like 10 of the last 12 minutes. At least enough for its own abbreviated plotline.

Where’s the vignettes where we see them find out about the illness? Where are the (real) moments in the hospital? The kids in the hospital?

Their actual, final moment together?

It just cheapens the whole concept of meeting the mother, which, again, through all the emotional ups and downs that dotted an otherwise mediocre show to lead up to it, made the entire venture worthwhile.

And to what end? That’s what I can’t figure out either. There’s no point to it. We don’t know if they just had a little late-life fling and then moved along again. We don’t know if they actually did rekindle their love and grow old together.

For a show that ever only did Life well, they took the 20 minutes or whatever they had to articulate the most meaningful moments of Ted’s post-30s life and kind of just meandered around them to finish off with one last gag with that stupid blue horn.

Well – to be fair, Ted wouldn’t have had to explain in detail to his kids what their mother’s illness was all about. They had lived it. But, I never really liked the Robin-Ted thing. I always find those on-again/off-again relationships contrived. It seemed played out in the end.

I think I am disappointed with the ending because I felt Barnie and Robin were so good together, as were Ted and Tracey. I would have loved to have seen more of them together. They had such chemistry. Ted and Robin did not have chemistry. I think Christin Miliotti is a really good actress and I hope she does more TV and movie work.

AND I’ve been watching every week from the start…..I hate the fact that he told this story to his and Tracy’s kids all this while….and they knew that he was always in love with Robin….they had to know for a long time if she was still in his life… The writers made it seem like she moved on…disappointed

It’s true is was a waste. But when I saw the scene with Tracy in the hospital gown and bed, I couldn’t help but think of Love Story, and for a brief moment the Wave of sadness that was at the core of Love Story’s theme came over me..haunted, mortified…devastated…all in a split second.. I was almost ready for Ted to end up like Barrett, but man, it would have been so hard to take…So hard…. I don’t think the writers were ready to make the audience so sad….

I don’t understand how people consider this ending more realistic. Yes, I can understand The Mother dying and Ted having to deal with that. I can also understand Barney and Robin’s divorce because that is definitely realistic, even though I thought they could have worked it out. However, I don’t understand why after 25 years Ted would want to be with Robin again. She made it so clear time after time that she did not want to be with him. I find it so hard to believe that Ted would regress all the way back to season one. 25 years have passed, and Ted is still exactly the same person, so much for him growing up and evolving, finding someone who actually loved him for him. Ted and Robin were never right for each other after season 4-5. Why work so hard to show their differences if they were really meant to be? They completely ruined Ted’s growth over not only just 9 seasons, but 25 years.

The one fatal flaw here is the fact that they cast Cristin Milioti as the Mother. Granted, it was a fine line they had to walk – find someone who could live up to the hype but not eclipse Robin. This finale might have worked with another actress in the role, but Milioti was so wonderfully charming that even though she was given limited time on-screen (in fact, I think they knew the danger in having the audience get too invested in her) she won everyone over, and we fell in love with her. She was perfect, in fact too perfect for the ending they had contrived so long ago. Milioti was so good that Tracey’s death hit me as hard as Lily’s death would have. So this ending for me was as if Ross finally married Rachel, but 10 years later she died and he ended up with Emily. In a romantic comedy, no-one wants to see the hero end up with a consolation prize at the end, and to me that is what Robin was. And as far as this being more “real,” well this isn’t reality, it’s fiction, and it just didn’t work on-screen. I did enjoy most of the finale and can see its greatness, but they just sucker-punched me too hard at the end.

That’s an absolutely terrible analogy to make. Firstly, if anything, Rachel is the Robin of Friends, not Emily. Emily was present for maybe 20 episodes or so, more similar to Tracy, rather than Robin/Rachel who were there for 200+ and friends with Ted/Ross for 10 years.

Of course it’s fiction but why should that mean it can’t be realistic?

Robin’s not exactly a bad consolation prize…took him 6 years to get fully over the death of the perfect girl and he’s ready to move on and who better than one of his best friends who seems to have finally realised how much she’s missed out on her love life by putting her career first. As Ted said many years ago, “I don’t want perfect, I want Robin”. Not exactly a “consolation prize”.

Just once in TV history I’d hoped they’d do something bold by having the main character walk away from the long time love interest to be with someone new. And like TomMc mentioned above, they(Millioti and the show) did such a great job of creating a Mother character that totally wins you over in such a small amount of screen-time… it really seemed like they were gonna do it.

But nope. Regress the characters back 3 years, cheaply clear the way to end up back with the “original love interest”, collect paycheck, continue to the next inevitable “first love is best” sitcom.

Sorry, I’m from Italy, so my english is not too good.
I really don’t like this end. And, my disappointing would be less loud, if Robin were made for Ted. But the writers show in 9 season she’s not. In this finale they destroied three characters, and they didn’t honour Tracey, the women that would have to be The One.
First, Robin didn’t love Ted. Actually, I didn’t like the locket story, because I think it was incoherent with Robin herself. The writers just sowed seeds for this CRAPPY end.

Second, they reset completely Barney. He grows up during these years, the women that changed him is Robin!!!! Not the daughter……this end is so wrong.

Third, Ted. For nine years he talks about “the mother”, and I never doubted that She Was the ONE, every single step in his life, leads him to her, and what? She died, and we find that he never stop love Robin, and finally, after 25 YEARS!!!!, they stay together…. Clap Clap Clap, Clap…

The worst end ever. This WAS my best sit com. I can’t believe they done this to their creature. It’s a mutilation. They killed Barney, his story with Robin, but, overall, every word that Future Ted says is a lie.